Secrets - Part 0M6! (Facial Funtasy)

Click above for animation. About 4MB.

Well, Animation Mentor came through with a near flawless script that popped off that old pesky expressionless head and surgically attached a new and improved Bishop melon that has full facial controls on it. Bravo for AM and namely Taylor Mahony for pulling off such a complex and, quite frankly, daunting task for hundreds of students, so that we can all move our shots forward, twirling into the future. Wooot!

So getting in there and messing around, I got all giddy. The face has a fantastic range, distorting into some of the goofiest mugs I’ve seen in an animated character available in a school. Her brow was completely lost in her bangs and the hair had to be unparented to make the head swap anyways so I decided to move forward with her uber-pig-tails hidden for now. Fret not, dear reader, for they have promised to return. For now, try not to judge her for her shiny golden brown baldness.

The only down side to the head swapping script is that eye direction and blink animation were not transferable. But actually all during break, I noticed how cock-eyed the "Secrets - Part 5" thumbnail is for the video. So perhaps it is a blessing in disguise that I was prompted to go back and rework the eyes. I immediately set to work, recreating what I had previously done while adding in a few tweaks that I was dying to make since last semester. It felt very good to get back on the proverbial horse.

At first I was having a bit of trouble trying to figure out what my approach should be. Normally, I would lay out the animation pose to pose, but I had many poses already and I also had the muppet mouth flapping moves left over from last semester. So it struck me as a bit odd to go in there and start hitting expressions at certain times frames that would only hold for a few fractions of a second. I chose to work straight ahead with the brows first and the eye shapes next. After I had that done, I posted on Wednesday and got some great feedback on my piece from fellow AM’ers, which boosted my confidence a bit and turbo charged me into the rest of the week. I also got a days distance and saw some stuff that I was pushing way too much and other stuff that was timed very wrong. So I went a fixin’ and a tinkerin’ and got the beast beat into shape.

So once I had some of that cleaned up, I went in and animated the (drumroll please)……cheeks!!!! Yes, the cheeks. It sounds a bit stupid, actually, but this worked out fantastic. I really was able to focus on the eyes and brow movement and again I revisited the lids and got all of that working in harmony (I hope, I hope.) By the time I got to the mouth shapes and phoneme shapes, the whole thing was pulling together sans difficulty and it seems all the hand wringing that I was doing was for naught. Silly naughty naught.

So now that I look at it, UGGGH do I want to change some of the body movement. I see all of this stuff that I want to punch up and make more clear and weighty. I can’t believe I can think it is all good one week and come back another and see what I now see. I will never, ever have any confidence to judge my stuff again. I know for a fact know that I don’t know. But hey, perhaps that is a sign of improvement and knowing that I will never be done learning this stuff is sort of a big reason why it drives me so crazy for it in the first place (in a good way.) So I’m completely dying to hear what my mentor says and thinks and crits me for. I told him to go all out and pick me apart this semester as I hope to run with the big boys some day sooner than later. During the Q&A he said something that should be part of his voice box if ever a JasonS action figure was to be made...

"Honesty never has to be brutal."

Ok, so that is plenty of blathering for one week. Thanks again for your interest. You are my only fan.